Suddenly, along the river, the form of a man would begin to fade into existence. the form standing about six foot tall. it was a slow process in which this being started to exist here in the otherworld. teal blue eyes suddenly piercing from where the male's head was, brown colored hair flowing to his shoulders as it began to color itself in. the man wore nothing to cover his torso, the chest region completely open, showing off exposed and ripped up organs; the heart the only thing still beating and working in time. the ribcage was shattered, the spine the only thing holding this man up. his left arm hung loosely, the flesh almost untouched. his right arm was gone, though what seemed like armor was there on the right side of his chest, charred into the flesh thereon; it couldn't be removed. from the waist down his body was covered in a long black hakama; his feet exposed beneath it were bare.

"Where... am i..."

A voice came from the visage of the male, questioning and confused as to his whereabouts at the current moment in time. he was unaware of the condition of his body, or so it seemed. taking a step forward he felt the waters of the river against his feet and he looked down. a gasp escaped his lips as he noticed the condition he was in for the first time. attempting to move his right arm he found that it was not attached, this making him begin to ponder on just where he was. this body was just a spiritual manifestation of his current form, in both look and condition; the true body elsewhere at the current time.

Eyes gazed across the river for a moment, his vision not perceiving the locations of any others within this place currently; he was out of it, in both element and mind. shaking his head he heard the creak and snap of bones, his body fractured in almost every place. he felt no pain from it though, not here in this world. breathing in the air felt, familiar. his mind seeming to reach out to the air itself he felt particles of spirit on the breeze. eyes snapping open again he drew a tiny amount of energy to himself; particles of spirit turning a visible blue as they started to gather over the right shoulder. attempting to shape something from them his concentration was broken by a pain he did feel. body collapsing under its own weight he falls to his knees. eyes staring down at the river as it flowed on by.

"Have I, passed on?"

He questioned aloud, unsure if anyone was there to hear his words. he hadn't passed on, but was fighting for his life elsewhere; body in a tube of fluids, kept in suspended animation. surgeries were being performed, medicines applied in grand qualities. the finest care was being given to him in hopes that he would continue to live. his mind kept unaware of what was going on. the last conscious thought was of him being blown away by a massive attack that put him in the state he appeared in. what happened next, was unknown to his thoughts.

Right Arm Status: Gone

{ "..Only when your heart is in balance can you claim to have true strength." }

A dreary pallor of smoked gray and sibilant sounds from the air made suddenly bleak the blank drawn surroundings of this unfamiliar world to the arrival. Spun wild and whorl through dervishes spawned from some vast breach in the river, came the bow and the form and the shadow of however he perceived his transporter cross the way.

The image made manifest in his own accordance of how he would be taken to the Otherworld spoke sweetly or sour… Spoke dread, or destitute, or derision. It spoke precisely what he needed to hear in that span of space between them.

His impression gave way to the tenor of that voice. To the depth, or the breadth, or the reaches of its hearing to him who gave it all there was to give. The Drowned God reached out through the shuddering air… And spoke. Answering the question.

“You are here… And yes. Yes you have."

The Boatman pointed down at the others feet… Indicating where he was standing as his current location before turning on a heel and moving towards the other end of the vessel of this mans imagining. Speaking from the stern.

His head lifted as he pushed his body up from where he had collapsed as the being appeared before him. he perceived this being as one like him, but much more grand in stature. the brown hair of the being flowed as if in a gentle breeze as he just took in the sight before him. the words that were spoken made his whole body shake for a moment; the still beating heart in his exposed chest coming to a stop for a moment. a couple moments would pass, the heart then starting to beat once more.

"Then I have failed... I was unable to protect them..."

He referred to his family in that sentence, his voice not as warm as it should have been. a saddened look came over his features as the figure welcomed him aboard the vessel, telling him he was here to take him somewhere else. his bones creaked once more as the figure moved and made his way onto the vessel. the boat seemed familiar to him, but strange at the same time. something about this place felt right, but inside his mind said that this was all wrong. once on the boat he would find a place to sit, attempting once more to gather some energy from the surrounding area. particles of spirit turning to a visible blue as they began to collect about his missing arm, only to fail once more.

"I can't even summon up the energy to cover these wounds... i don't feel pain, so it must be true... but this isn't how I thought it would be..."

His statement was one of displeasure, more at himself than anything else. was death what we perceived it to be? was it just the last whims of our mind crafting a dream, or was it something more than that, something tangible? his mind wandered as he glanced up to the figure before him, trying to see him as he truly was, not as what his perception would make him out as. the piercing teal-blue of his eyes could once pierce through the soul; could he still gaze upon beings as such, or would that fail him in this place too?

"Where are we going? If I may ask.."

Right Arm Status: Gone

{ "..Only when your heart is in balance can you claim to have true strength." }

Coming to a stop the girl kicked at the earth, watching as the dust cloud puffed into the air. Small particles of debris scattering a few feet, some mere inches before finding a new home with in the soil. Eyes scanned around and around, nothing. Absolutely nothing was around the area, not a soul or bug or anything for that matter. Sniffing lightly before her feet became moving once more . Tilting her head slightly as she walked on drawing ever closer to the river. Fog becoming thinner around her person. Billowing slightly with black strands of hair, icy eyes peering out; glowing almost in the light that was given off from some place.

A low hum bubbled into the air from her throat, lovely little sad melody that haunted the air. Movements slowed to a graceful gate, hips swayed back and forth in the fog stirring it up as well. Before long the beauty came to another stop this time near the dock. Not knowing if this was coming in or the actual one that connected the otherworld. Shrugging to no one she stepped onto the aged wood sounding like a siren drawing in sailors. Stepping lightly and with quick feet the edge was clear to view. Looking into the water, watching the loss souls float under the surface. Some reaching up towards her in a plea for help. But Ania was no fool, if her fingers even grazed the surface they would drag her under and drown her. Jealous of the freedom they possessed from walking free.[size ]

"Well it cert'nly... smells like you may have gotten a lil' lucky here..." he gave the decaying man another look over, but saw no sign of who he was searching for. Suddenly, though, he was shaking, a few teeth pattering to the floor.

"Chilly, bud?" he asked, picking up one of his fallen teeth and handing it back to the man. That was certainly unusual for someone undead, to have a temperate that was any different from their environment. There wasn't really a lot going on inside them to change their own temperature. Scott's eyebrow went up. "Didn't know zombies got chills."

A place of whimsy, pure creation in all it's myriad of colors. There was dark, light, and every shade that existed in between that spectrum of emotion given form.

There was a large crystal, standing on it's sharp point in the midst of this chaos. The creature inside of it's refuge had a wispy smile on it's lips, soaking up the chaos around her with the absent mindedness of a dreamer that has begun to slip past the dream.

She was shapely, classic hour glass figure. Her hair floated around her head in a halo of blue strands that wrapped around her long neck with every other revolution of the crystal in which she was imbedded. Her form was pale, but when the light struck her, it broke up into a rainbow of color against the delicate scales that covered her. The gills palely distinguished on her neck, waved open and shut with her respirations of her deep slumber. There was an outline at the curve of her jaw where her poison sacs were stored. A fluttering of sliver noted where her piercings covered her elongated ears, one of which was connected to her nose by a filament of a chain.

Her forehead bore the mark of shadow. An obsidian gem in the center of her forehead pulsated with the essence of that which it collected. Pure fear, darkness at it's basest form.

Her arms were crossed over her chest, one of which bore the mark of Poe. A long white serpent, who coiled, and writhed with a life of his own.

Two shells supported her breasts, heaving at the edge of confinement with the anticipation of spilling over with a breath too much.

A long tail wrapped itself around her thigh, a spaded tip sculpted around her calf. Another shell cupped her womanhood, a measure of modesty for the sake of those that she would wake amongst should she awaken.

She had slumbered here since the birth of her flesh and blood. Waiting for the seven to assemble so that she might ascend closer to the Great White Serpent. The stories told about her conquests, and deeds fed her. She had taken a page out of the book of the Count who had made himself into a godling to be worshiped. It fueled his power, of which she had ever been in search of.

Vanka had strayed from Loki's side, as curiosity asumed the best of him. A new presence had snatched his attention right up. The darkness radiating from her form was warm and inviting to the twisted little boy like creature, for in his own right he didn't feel like he was evil...He was actually quite nice and curious. In fact, he was still very young indeed, still ignorant as the minds of his makers. Like a bloodhound on the hunt, he figuratively followed his nose to the source of the aroma that so seduced those close enough...Those weak enough. 'Who is that strange new lady? I hope she will want to be friends! Maybe we can play!?'

He giggled lightly in excitement as his arms extended to his side, his somewhat lowered upperbody teetering to and fro as he ran in a zig zag pattern. airplane noises escaping his mouth as he froliced his way towards the sudden but not new presence to Vara Veru. As he got closer to her he grew silent and his arms dropped to his sides as he turned from his run into a slow steady stroll. Approaching the woman with instantaneous nervousness.

Through fire and blood, he roared as he fell and into a twisting spire of flame. Heat licked against his flesh and the smell of death breached his nostrils. Yet his mind stayed, confined within the utterance of his Faith as the corrupted attempted to ravage his mind and draw him away from purification. But they did not, could not know that his Faith was his only treasure, and that Faith was coveted. He fell deeper and deeper into the pit of darkness and despair, spinning, hurling and twisting.

Suddenly his descent deceased, he hit the depths of darkness and found himself kneeling, hammer in right fist as it pressed the ground. The light that breadth upon his back began to fade, his head looked up, his eyes gleaming in the dissipating light, he closed them, and he inhaled. His spirit lifted, his body illuminated. His soul gifted alight, blazed in the darkness.

He stood, his body lit by a white glowing flame, whisking in the cold dark calamity of the unnatural. His war hammer shimmering in blue resin. His eyes peered into the kindred of the dark, his right fist raised, the hammer roared as he readied, "God have mercy on you..."

Rapdevil didn't think about death. When it happened, he didn't even know he was dying, face half blown away and left arm flailing like a broken wing, legs kicking sporadically, pathetically clawing up the blood soaked ice and dirt into a short pile near his urine soaked crotch. There was no thought of what if. There was no question of how he was going to die, or even when.

He had never thought of it until now, now when last words were something fading fast from a dimming mind so strewn across the ivory snow that even he began to laugh...

Was quite unable to stop.

His brain felt seized by hundreds of gripping pincers, every part of his fading consciousness screaming to be pelted away in every direction except he simply couldn't allow that. No, Rapdevil was one for last words. In this case, he was able to utter one word, the embers trailing off of his enchanted left arm catching his flap of scalp aflame, his vision washing over in cooling fire as he felt his eyes begin to boil and pop.

He could do nothing but speak.

"Mama."

---

The rising. White walls slicking over an oil surface where lights could only catch at the corner of one's eyes, objects so sharp in contrast they seemed to pierce the senses from afar, shuddering breaths pulsing a new heart to beat within the infinite unknown. Screams came from a tunnel from high above. Rapdevil moaned like a lost child, his naked body firing through a maroon cosmos that twisted into deeper hues until all was black fixating towards a pinprick of green nexus. He looked at his hands, fingers growing as tall as towers, arms bulging then finally compressing to relieve the hidden muscle beneath its fleshy exterior. He felt his forehead split, his entire being tapering open so easily it felt natural to unwind himself like this, to become nothing and yet perceive everything happening at once, to still think about the little things. What had happened back there on Ixis? One minute he was the Left Arm of the Devil and the next he was shitting his pants with a hole the size of an apple through his brain pan, his last thoughts of what? "Death?" He spoke with lips that now tethered away, his teeth plunking out with wet pops from bloodless gums. "Home.." His rough tongue slithered off to part into segmented dimples, his abdomen flexing then expanding nearby whilst veins and nerve endings fired off erratic tesla all around, his yellowed eyeballs slurping out from their sockets to stare back at the everything he had become.

"Hell." Rapdevil wasn't one to question the air. He knew the answer as to what this newest state of being was, so spoke it well enough, his fragmented and mangled soul slipping closer towards the ambient lime light. Tufts of radioactive static played off into one of his floating eardrums like the preaching of some newscaster, some dictator demanding that we take arms now or shall forever perish, Gods save the Monarch, Gods save the Leader...

A red trimmed hallway fired like a monorail around the universally expanded Rapdevil then, shirking him like a missile towards a growing pinnacle so terrifyingly fast that it seemed slow, inevitable that the inertia was not simply speed but a set pace just for him, just enough for him to catch the flicker of events from his past in every passing room.

---

The incubation chamber. Ebony coils were dug deep into his left forearm, pumping drugs and who knows what else hot and heavy into his thirsty veins. A short alarm like a police siren blurted off, and all around him fluid was draining, the wiring and coils he had known his entire life (That's not right?) up until now finally expelling themselves from his flesh, prying themselves from his innards forcibly.

Blood pumped out from his left arm's writhing surface, pain dull but true beginning to rush into his mind's eye. It was a new sensation, to feel. Flashing crackles of energy powered the capsule he was grown within to piston itself open. The capsule tilted with whirs of high tech gears to deposit him unto the cold tile below.

Silicon slime exploded from his compressed bowels, his nude form heaving and retching synthetic amniotic fluid all over the marble floor, several armed soldiers standing nearby taking attention. Hopeful, dark eyed scientists were taking far too many notes under a sterile coat of white light behind a glass screen across the way, the high walled room lined down the middle with a fat bar of grayed glass where Rapdevil could barely see their faces but knew they were there simply watching. "Where?!" He gasped, trying to remember how he had gotten here. Where was his...mother? Why couldn't he remember? The nude boy struggled to his feet, shaking and holding his head in his feverishly hot hands. His left palm literally scalded his sunken cheek before he pried it away, the soldiers coming forward with calculated steps, automatic weapons aimed at the ready. "Where!!" He tried to scream, feeling weak in his knees but somehow strong. His scorching palm clasped into a tiny fist, the burn on his cheek steaming from where it had been cooked to a respectable 3rd degree burn.

"Begin test...Now." A curt voice from a hidden intercom.

Motions were made, and the soldiers took point. They began to fire.

Rapdevil's left arm riveted open like a slinky, the red muscle underneath glowing with new found power.

"Where is my MAMA!!!"
----

The blinding flash Rapdevil saw from the infinite was never given time to fade. "Just a glimpse more." He wished to go back and see more, but this ride didn't seem to be going backwards any time soon. His body was beginning to clasp back together. He even felt his nails slip back on, scarred arms stitching back together before his very eye, the left one still free floating within the Ether. He stared down at his brutalized left forearm, feeling over the rivets where he knew it could part and ignite. Why was he being shown these things? Why did he even deserve any fate at all after death, let alone this.

Before he could dwell further into meaningless quandary another room zoomed by, his attention peaked by it's contents.

----

A woman started forward, ushering a towel for a boy in a man's body, wrapping Subject 99 snugly around his shoulders. She coos to his waking senses, wiping at his wisp of black and golden hair. "So like a leopard." She muses, pressing at one of the golden rings riveting 99's soaked frock of hair. "You did good." She hugs him with one arm to her bosom, the shaking boy unable to comprehend.

"Mama."

"That's right, I'm your Mama."
----

This room bothered Rapdevil. He clasped his eyes shut until it passed, the sound of the void letting him know that the memory had ended. But now the nexus in the distance wasn't so distant after all.

Looking down, the carpet he was flying over changed in pattern radically, patterns of every culture flickering like a motion picture across it's claret face. Rapdevil stopped looking down. One, he was naked. Two, that s**t was insane. Actually, all of this was...

"Insane." He agreed with no one, finally crashing into the star.
---

Mist. The smell of the sea. These things were not foreign to Rapdevil, his low lidded eyes shuddering open, gilded irises catching the reflection of endless waters. He felt the wind in his short hair, the kiss of a cresting wave truly awakening him. His hands fell to his face, and here he sat with his legs splayed out on his a** for several minutes, rubbing and coaxing the explosive headache he now had out of mind, out of sight.

"Was I drugged." He already thought that sounded stupid by the time it came out, so instead of it being a question it became a dull, unfortunate statement. He felt at his crotch.

He was still naked, he discovered, but at least that was better then having pee pants.

"Hilarious." He actually laughed, rubbing at his temples while standing up from the dune he was plopped in. He rubbed at his back and nude thighs, looking off to see if there was anything across the water..

"Rapdevil what is going on.." He hopelessly asked himself now, not caring at all for the stupidity of this moment. What could he do but wonder?

Her eyes swirled lazily while she soaked up the chaotic impulses around her. The surge of powerful emotions, especially fear, infused her with dark purpose. She yawned, her long sharp canines glistening in the reflected light of her resting place.

A long forked tongue snaked out from between her lips to test the air.

This was not the womb of the Great White Serpent. The walls of this place were ones that she created in her own mind. She had been asleep, she realized. She had been in this place, or one like it for a long time. She heard the playful laughter of a child. For a moment she thought that Prince Falcon had brought back her son from the desert. He was still a child wasn't he?

She found the boy that waited for her. He'd asked her to play. She had seen shades like him come to the dungeons of her home before. Looking to claim a piece of the misery that the prisoners bled out so easily. She stretched her arms out above her head, her spine aligning itself loudly. She had been inactive for longer than she thought.

He replied with an innocent and coy smile. His dark eyes looking up at her. His one strange eye that was bigger than the other freaked most people out. Though surely out of all of his features that was one of it not the most least threatening. But what was a good game to play with a stranger? Perhaps something that would help them to learn things of each other, but something fun all at once, not really competition in anyway.

"Do you like playing hide and seek?"

He questioned with much interest. His hand now placed together before him, fingers laced betwixt one another. His idea was a good one! Whom ever was the seeker would find the hider and then ask them a question they would both answer. He loved making new friends, and this lady seemed perfect. Sure Loki was his best friend, and something he felt he couldn't even compare to some mere stranger, but little Vanka craved more. Oh the life and times of Phantasticus Amicus...So friendly, yet so strange. As exciting and different as the millions of children that create them.

She watched him waiting patiently for her answer. She would assent to his game, even if there was little at stake there could be something to be gained from playing with him. She was a stranger in a strange land. She would have to learn the layout of this place if she was to navigate through it.

"And if I get lost?" she asks, lifting her chin up to gaze around herself with interest. The shapes around her were in constant flux. She had the impression that it could be whatever she wanted it to be, but that would be impossible. She was the Tanith. The only place she wanted to be was joined with the Seven so that she could ascend closer to the Great white serpent.

The white serpent tattoo on her arm writhed beneath her scaled skin. Poe. He was restless in this place. She ran her long fingers over the outline of him, causing it's body to coil again, seeking a purchase somewhere to drape itself.